


Five People Who Know

by hestia_lacey



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2011-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:33:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hestia_lacey/pseuds/hestia_lacey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five people who know exactly how John Sheppard feels about Rodney McKay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five People Who Know

Meredith has always lived in his imagination.

For as long as Jeannie can remember, her brother has inhabited the universe in his mind, the one he shapes with numbers and paints into comprehension with boldly creative math.

He’d deny any insinuation of such artistry, of course, but his skill makes things as beautiful and lasting in her eyes as Beethoven, as Monet, and Jeannie is proud of his talent.

Meredith has always loved in his imagination too, or so it seems to her. There have been women: April and Sarah, Sam Carter and Katie Brown, but they’ve only ever been names to her, abstract and theoretical, unproven fantasies.

So when Mer comes home for Christmas with a smiling Jennifer Keller on his arm, Jeannie has to forcibly restrain herself from pinching the woman just to make sure she’s really there.

It’s a surprise seeing them together. Not so long ago, before bridging dimensions and nanites and brain parasites, Jeannie might have said the shock was that a bright, frankly beautiful woman like Jennifer Keller was with deeply flawed and distinctly average Meredith McKay.

Jeannie knows better now, and the surprise isn’t the league Keller’s in, but how uncomfortable Jeannie feels when she watches them together.

It’s just, Mer isn’t Mer around her; he’s someone else altogether, a stranger wearing Mer’s face. Jeannie can see how he’s shaped himself into the man Jennifer wants to see, blunted his edges to make himself safe. His careful speech, the quiet courtesy and the absence of cutting, blazing sarcasm is just wrong. Jeannie is freaked out by it all, can’t talk to him like this.

Meredith is a model gentleman and Jeannie hates it with unanticipated vehemence; Mer is now what she’d always wanted her brother to be, but he’s not himself and Jeannie wants Meredith more than she wants tact and courtesy. It’s… it’s disquieting, downright unnerving, but Mer seems happy enough, and she can’t bring herself to say anything about it.

In the week before Christmas, they do all the things that have become tradition in the years since Mer came back into her life. They go shopping, they decorate, they bake cookies on Christmas Eve. Kaleb takes Madison carol singing, and on Christmas morning they gather around the tree to exchange gifts. It’s different than it has been before now, but Jeannie can’t figure out why until Madison opens small paper wrapped parcel Kaleb hands her from beneath the tree.

It’s one of the gifts Mer has brought with him, but there’s no label. It’s not from Teyla who carefully binds up her gifts in soft silk and silver-shot twine, and it’s not from Ronon who doesn’t see the point of wrapping at all. It’s not in the practical, easy bags Mer prefers, so there’s only one other possibility: John.

Madison fastidiously picks open the clumsy wrapping, setting the blue and yellow ribbons carefully to one side. Inside is a small, rough hewn wooden box that rattles slightly when Maddie gives it a tentative shake. It’s not what Jeannie would expect from John Sheppard at all. Then Madison lifts the lid and smiles her bright, contagious little girl smile. Jeannie can’t see what’s inside just yet but she approves already because of the way it lights Madison up.

Madison reaches in and draws out a bracelet, a jangle of clay and glass beads strung on a leather thong. Madison holds the string up to the light so the colours of the glass light up. It’s a crude, hand-made thing, all the more delightful because of the irregular shape of the pieces threaded onto the woven leather. Madison slides it onto her wrist with great solemnity and fingers the string, biting her lip, frowns up at Rodney.

Of all the things Jeannie thinks Maddie might say right then, it’s not this:

“Uncle Mer? Why didn’t Uncle John come with you?”

Mer blinks. Jeannie gapes and Jennifer looks distinctly uncomfortable curled into Mer’s side on the sofa. But for all it’s unexpected, the question makes sense: Maddie’s known John as long as she’s known Meredith and sees them together more often than she sees them apart. Mer sends e-mails and copies John in, Maddie always has a response for both of them.

After a long, stunned silence, Mer manages an awkward, unhelpful “Um…”

“He made this for me,” Maddie says, running her fingers thoughtfully over the bracelet, “’Cos I made one for him when you came to visit.” Jeannie remembers the circle of neon plastic beads Maddie gave John at Easter, the last time he and Rodney had leave on Earth. She remembers seeing them on John’s wrist, peeping out from beneath his wrist band when they had taken Rodney to the shrine.

“He said he’d see me at Christmas, but…” Madison’s eyes flick over to Jennifer and Jeannie heart skips a beat because that thing that was missing, that thing that wasn’t quite right is John, Meredith with John, and she’s stunned at how quickly the pieces fall into place, how it all snaps suddenly into focus. Jeannie is amazed and pissed that she missed it, that it took this long for her to work through the math.

She thinks about bridging universes and nanites and parasites, about the raw look on John’s face at the way Mer screamed his name, about Wallace’s ‘accident’, the way he put his hands on her brother.

Nobody says anything for a beat too long. Mer looks absolutely lost, Madison looks anxious. Jeannie can’t find words for either of them right now, at least, not the right ones, so it’s Kaleb who eventually answers. “Honey, Uncle John is thinking about you, you know that. It’s just – at Christmas people have to spend time with their families. I’m sure if he could be here, he would be.”

Maddie frowns again, fingers the beads, and looks supremely unconvinced. Jeannie thinks about the things Mer told her about David Sheppard, about what family really is, and knows that wherever he may be, John Sheppard is not with his family today.

Looking over at Jennifer’s carefully blank, down turned face Jeannie realises in a hot, angry rush that she’s not the only one who knows this, not the only one who knows why.

* * *

The deep pleasure of being with Kanaan like this has yet to fade for her. This, simply sleeping with him in a soft, warm wrap of cloth and tangle of sprawling limbs is still a thrill, is still precious after all the time they spent apart, all they have been through.

To just be in the same space and breath as him is enough to keep her awake sometimes, immersed in his closeness as though they were still young love, as though she were not the mother of their child. There is contentment here in the darkness, in their shared blankets.

Teyla listens to Kanaan breathe, to the way Torren shifts I his sleep, the wash of the sea far below her window.

She listens to the quiet footfalls outside her door, barely audible, shifting restlessly. She knows the tread: she’s been expecting this.

Silently, she slips out from beneath the sheets. Kanaan opens his dark eyes and reaches instinctively for her. Teyla feels a warm, deep rush of affection for him and lets it show on her face, in her rueful smile. “John,” she says, gesturing to the doorway. Kanaan sighs, then nods, pressing a kiss to the back of her hand as she stands and wraps a robe over her nightclothes. “I will watch Torren,” he whispers, “take what time you must with him.”

“Thank you,” Teyla says, cupping his cheek, pressing her forehead to his. Outside their door, the footsteps have stopped.

“Go,” Kanaan says, pushing her gently away.

When Teyla opens the door, John is already walking away. He turns back at the hush of the door opening mechanism and Teyla’s heart breaks a little at the look on his face.

Rodney took Jennifer out tonight, black velvet box clasped nervously in one hand, and Teyla has been waiting for John because she knows, knows John, knows Rodney too and can see the threads between them.

She knows, she and Ronon both, but John wouldn’t take this to him. Teyla says nothing, but then John didn’t come to her for words. Instead, she holds out her hand. John bites his lip, shifts awkwardly on the balls of his feet as though to run, but edges forward despite the impulse to flight Teyla can see is strong in his bones. After a single, shaky breath John takes her hand; his palm is damp in hers, fingers grasping hers tightly. She pretends not to notice the tremor in his grip.

In silence, Teyla leads John to the pier edge, the place where he can see the glimmering sea and a vast, calming expanse of sky, where darkness and shadows make him feel safe.

Teyla sits next to him in the cool night air, one hand braced on the smooth deck, the other stroking the fine hairs at the nape of John’s neck. John is hurting, missing something he never had and hating it, Teyla knows. She wishes desperately that John would know the warmth of Rodney’s body as she knows Kanaan’s, that he could have the peace she carries inside her now.

But she also sees the way Rodney smiles at Jennifer, the way his hands fit to her waist, her happiness and his, reflecting to each other, and she can’t find it in herself to wish that away.

John has come to her for comfort, but sometimes she feels just as helpless as he does, just as hopeless. They’re her family, she wants all of them – John and Rodney and Ronon – she wants them to be happy. But it’s a paradox, a riddle she can’t solve, not when she’s caught up in it as much as anyone.

Nonetheless, she will do for John what she can, always. Even if this silence is all she can offer.

They sit together until the dawn seeps up from the horizon, blue and familiar, until John has to close his eyes against the colour.

* * *

Radek has been a silent observer of them both from the beginning. Of all of them that remain in the city, he is the only one who stepped through the stargate all those years ago with Rodney McKay and John Sheppard, three paces behind them, unnoticed.

Unnoticed is where he has been since then. This is not to say that he is overlooked, or undervalued, but to say that next to Rodney, who owns whatever space he occupies, who is a force against the physics they know; next to John Sheppard who draws in the eye like a black hole draws light, it’s not easy to see Radek Zelenka.

But Radek certainly sees them. He watches an unlikely friendship grow, marvels at it with the others, sees it deepen, sees it become stronger than anyone might have guessed. He watches affection well up, rich and honest and mutual, watches them be together and it’s good, it’s gratifying to observe because Radek likes them both, truly, and they like each other and their smiles, their happiness is contagious, catches in the labs, spreads from bench to bench, a welcome contagion.

Then Radek watches the way Sheppard leans, the flirtatious, lazy flutter of his hands and the lure of his smile, tilt of his hips, dip of his lashes. He watches Sheppard’s eyes, the colours in them just for Rodney, hears the change in Sheppard’s voice, counts the ways Sheppard gives himself away and all the ways Rodney misses.

It’s painful watching Sheppard fall, oblivious, into Rodney. It’s even more painful when Sheppard finally realises and can’t stop himself, when Rodney talks about sweet Katie Brown and then pretty Jennifer Keller and Sheppard just listens, heart bleeding out of his eyes and all over the lab bench for anyone who’s looking to see. Radek is a scientist, a keen observer. He can’t help but see it.

Then, one afternoon, Rodney asks Sheppard to meet in the lab for lunch. He arrives sparking and mischievous as ever, leaning forward over Rodney’s desk, hip cocked, looking up through his lashes with an easy smile. Rodney fumbles and stutters, swallows and then awkwardly passes John a small, black velvet box with a hopeful nervous smile and Radek has never been more angry with his friend than he is right then, because Rodney really doesn’t know and Radek can’t understand it at all.

Sheppard, bright and glowing, falls into himself, light flickering out in his eyes. Radek would swear the lab lights dim too, shadows deepening in the corners of the room as much as in the corners of Sheppard’s eyes. After a heartbeat of hesitation, Sheppard smiles at Rodney, grin stretched painfully over his lips.

Radek watches the diamond in Rodney’s hand catch the overhead light, catch in John’s eyes.

Radek has been a silent observer of them both since the beginning. Never before now has he wanted so badly to speak. But he can’t seem to find the words.

Across the room, it seems John can’t either.

* * *

McKay isn’t as bad at this as he used to be.

Ronon advances, step, twist, attack and Rodney evades, back, turn, block. The difference between then and now is obvious to Ronon. McKay’s body is his own now, not just a vehicle his mind occupies; his flesh isn’t an inconvenient necessity anymore, it’s a tool and Ronon is pleased to see the difference, proud of McKay and his achievements in a way he never would have suspected at the beginning.

Ronon grins at his friend, spin, step, spin, contact, then grins even wider as McKay yelps at the sting of the strike and drops his rods with a clatter.

“Ow,” Rodney says, panting, rubbing pointedly at the reddened flesh, glaring at Ronon and leaving his rods where they fell. “That hurt, you know!” Ronon sighs to himself because they’ve been over the part about recovering your arms about a billion times, but still, there the rods lie on the mat. McKay hasn’t even looked to see where they fell.

“Yeah,” Ronon says, then swipes his bantos across the back of Rodney’s knees, sending him tumbling to the mat in a graceless heap.

McKay isn’t as bad at this as he used to be, but he still kinda sucks.

McKay lies where he falls, flushed and gasping, damp with sweat.

“Recovering arms, right?” he gasps, gesturing weakly at the abandoned rods not three feet away from him.

“Yep. Again.” Ronon twirls his bantos with a flourish when Rodney glowers up at him just because he can, because it looks kinda cool, and because he knows it annoys McKay beyond words. Sure enough, McKay frowns up at him and flails agitatedly with one hand without speaking; he’s still breathing hard from the exertion so Ronon assumes the broad gesture is meant to convey both Rodney’s frustration at Ronon generally, and his enviable dexterity specifically. McKay’s little gestures are easy to read now, and Ronon likes them despite himself.

While McKay is slowly recovering, Ronon starts to gather the stuff he needs for Sheppard who’s due any minute.

Right on cue, the black strike of Sheppard’s body appears in the doorway. Rodney is still sprawled across the practice mat but seems to be lying there just for the rest, now; his breathing is back to normal (or as normal as it ever is), and he’s gazing up at the ceiling thoughtfully, eyes cloudy with numbers. Settled back into his brain again.

He hasn’t seen Sheppard, but Sheppard’s certainly seen him.

Sheppard’s body goes still, self-consciously so; the loose, easy roll slips out of his hips and his shoulders tighten imperceptibly. There’s tension in his frame, wariness, and Ronon sees how their sparring session will be: Sheppard awkward, rattled, mind wandering and muscle memory vague, body entirely preoccupied with the idea of McKay, with the sense of the other man in the room. He’s always like that when McKay ambushes him like this, when he appears unexpectedly in places John would count as his own, the escapes he likes to retreat to. When Rodney appears flushed and dressed down and sprawling. Sheppard’s body gives it all away, and he’s probably the only one who doesn’t know that.

It’s going to suck for Sheppard: Ronon won’t go easy on him in his distraction. Hell, he won’t go easy on him because of the distraction. It confuses Ronon that Sheppard, so obviously taken with McKay, does nothing, says nothing.

He gets the risk. He took the same chance with Melena and despite everything he’s survived, it’s still the most frightening thing he’s ever done. He’s thinking about making that blind jump again with Amelia, maybe. He just figured Sheppard might be braver than that.

But then Rodney looks up from the floor, straight at Sheppard, and just doesn’t see it. Everything is there if only McKay would look, but he’s blind to it, completely unaware of all the things Sheppard’s giving away.

Looking at McKay’s oblivious smile, at Sheppard’s fingers tight around his kit bag, Ronon thinks maybe Sheppard’s braver than he can understand.

* * *

Jennifer feels every single second between the emergency claxon and the jumper touch down like a fist to her stomach, every tick a painful blow that makes her eyes water, raises bile in the back of her throat. She sits with her fingers clasped tight in Teyla’s palm, white knuckled, as Major Lorne sets gently down in the brushland, shakes with impatience as the marines deploy, barrel first down the ramp. Just ahead of them, she catches sight of what can only be Sheppard’s wild hair dark against the yellowing scrub.

Rodney.

She waits for one stuttering heartbeat, then another, barely holding herself still. There are no shots fired, no raised voices, only wary, watchful silence and the susurration of the rough, dry grass shifting in the slight wind.

It sounds like a dying breath, and that’s enough for her to lose the tenuous hold she’s had on her patience: she pushes away from Teyla and darts through the others, evades Ronon’s hands as they reach to restrain her, crossing the open ground toward Sheppard at a run, heart pounding in time with her feet.

And then Rodney is right there, right in front of her, cradled in John’s lap, head pillowed in John’s spread palms. There’s blood – too much blood – everywhere; Rodney’s uniform is slick with it, the coppery scent of it strong, catching at the back of her throat. She can’t see a wound amid the wash of it, everything tacky-red and over-bright, but John has a field bandage saturated crimson clenched in his free hand, pressed to the curve where Rodney’s shoulder slides up into his throat.

Jennifer has kissed that spot, had licked the salt-sweet skin there just that morning.

Rodney is pale, too white underneath garish red, lips blue tinged. She can’t take her eyes off the place John’s hand presses.

Ronon skids to a halt beside her in a scuff of dust just as her knees buckle; he loops one arm around her waist before she falls, murmurs, “hey, hey,” into her hair when she presses into his side, because Jesus, Jesus it’s Rodney.

Marie and Luka crash down beside John seconds later, equipment folding out and sterile wrappers peeling away into the dirt as they work. Jennifer had thought she would be able to help: she thanks God Marie knew better than that. But it’s not the doctors Jennifer is watching. She’s looked up at Sheppard for the first time, really looked and the sight of him catches her breath.

His eyes are glazed, liquid dark and damp, tear-tracks smudging the blood smeared across one cheek, the bloody partial handprint cupped around his jaw. His focus is entirely on the man pulled up into his chest, the palm pressed with white-knuckled force to the wound at Rodney’s neck. He looks broken, raw, like he’s bleeding out too right along with Rodney.

When Marie tries to move John aside, when her gloved fingers press to back of John’s hand, he simply tightens his hold, presses his face into Rodney’s matted hair.

“Colonel, you need to let me help,” Marie says, gripping John’s shoulder.

John shrugs her away without blinking and shakes his head, presses his mouth to Rodney’s temple.

Then Teyla is at his side, slim fingers closing around his bloodied wrist. “John,” she says, voice low and gentle in Sheppard’s ear, “John, let the doctors help.” She squeezes his wrist and uses her other hand to pull his face around, tilt his eyes up to meet hers: “Let them help, John.”

John blinks dazedly, looks down at Rodney, strokes a hand over his cheek then lets the steady pull of Teyla’s hands peel him away. Teyla hooks her arms under John’s shoulders and pulls him up to stand beside her. Marie slips in to take his place at Rodney’s side before John is properly upright, and spends less than a minute working on the ground before she looks up and commands someone to “help me move him.”

There are six marines at her side in a blink, and it’s only then Jennifer realises they’ve been standing as spectators to the scene, weapons idle. When she sweeps her eyes around the grassland, she makes out the fallen bodies of three, eight, twelve people. She knows that nobody on the rescue team fired a single shot.

John is on his feet now, swaying against Teyla’s side.

“Are you hurt, John?” Teyla asks, forehead creased with concern. John isn’t paying attention: his eyes are fixed on Rodney as he’s strapped into the stretcher, and he clenches his hands as though confused by their emptiness.

“Rodney - ” he begins, voice rough.

“Look at me,” Teyla commands. John’s eyes slide slowly to hers at the demand in her tone. “Are you hurt?”

Shock, Jennifer thinks, even as she tremors with it herself.

“I… no,” John says, but it sounds like a question. He swallows hard, then whispers “Rodney,” like he just doesn’t have anything else to say, like it’s an explanation. Teyla bites her lip, nods gently, brings her forehead to John’s and takes one hand tightly in hers. It might seem that she’s holding John up, but Jennifer can see the trembling in Teyla’s shoulders: they’re holding each other together.

And it’s there, out in the grass and bloodied dust that Jennifer realises how much John Sheppard needs Rodney McKay, that he’s every bit as in love with Rodney as she is because nothing else makes him this vulnerable. Nothing else makes him so scared. It’s there that she looks to Teyla and Ronon and Lorne, realises that they already know that.

Later, after the surgery and transfusion, she’s sitting at Rodney’s bedside with Ronon and Teyla and Sheppard when Rodney opens his eyes.

“J…” he whispers, then chokes on the rest of the name. Ronon reaches forward and presses an ice chip to Rodney’s dry lips. Jennifer makes sure she’s the one to tighten her fingers around Rodney’s, lean over to press a dry kiss to his forehead. “I’m here,” she says, stroking softly through his hair.

Rodney’s eyes roll, hazy with morphine. “J…” he says again, free hand fumbling in the sheets.

Opposite her, Jennifer watches John reach out to twine his fingers with Rodney’s. When he catches her looking, whatever is in her face makes him abort the movement, drop his hand to fumble in the sheets instead.

“Here,” he says, voice hoarse, leaning forward into Rodney’s line of vision. “S’okay, I’m okay.” His hands are fisted into the blankets, holding on to the urge to reach out, to touch, holding on so hard his nail beds are white with the pressure.

It’s not that Jennifer is unsympathetic. She more than anyone knows what it’s like to love Rodney McKay.

But this, she thinks, settling one hand on the curve of Rodney’s ribs, this is how it is now.

This is her place, not his.

John steps back as she settles in the bedside chair. Jennifer fits her palm to the curve of Rodney’s forehead, smoothes over the skin there.

When she looks up again, John is gone.


End file.
